Texas

  Otto was not yet mature enough to understand that the incoming settlers demanded that Benito behave like an American, while he and his fellow Mexicans, occupants of Texas for a century, expected the Texicans to behave like Mexicans. It was an impasse that would never be resolved, but Otto was old enough to perceive the most fundamental contradiction of all. He, like Texas itself, needed the Mexicans and often loved them, but he did not always like them.

  Several months after the Macnabs returned home, a much more serious problem evolved from Finlay’s impulsive generosity in the New Orleans bank, because when the Baltimore bank informed Mrs. Berthe Macnab that a substantial sum of money had been forwarded to her daughters by their father in Texas, she interpreted this as a signal of reconciliation. She was tired of living alone, and like scores of other abandoned wives in the settled states, she convinced herself that her husband in Texas needed her. With a vigor and determination that astonished her Baltimore friends, she arranged for a sea voyage to New Orleans and a Gulf trip to Victoria.

  Consequently, one autumn day in 1833 a horseman rode out to the Campbell posada when the men were away, bringing news that ‘A lady calling herself Mrs. Macnab, she’s landed at Linnville, and she wants us to bring her here.’ Very quietly Otto closed the door so that Josefina would not hear, then asked: ‘What does she want?’ and the messenger said: ‘She told me she has come to join her husband.’ When Otto said nothing, the man asked, with a jerk of his thumb toward the room in which Josefina was singing: ‘And what about that one?’

  Otto considered this carefully, and slowly two reactions began to form. With his real mother at hand, and not in distant Baltimore, he recovered a most positive image of her: it was daybreak and she was bringing him a bowl of hot porridge rich with butter, cream and sugar. She had been a kind mother and he remembered how he had grieved when forced to leave her. But her shadowy portrait was erased by the thought of María, the wonderful Mexican woman whom he had adopted and whom he loved so dearly and in a different way. Desperately he wanted to protect her and her sister from sorrow of any kind.

  Accordingly, without saying a word to anyone, he took his horse and accompanied the messenger back to Victoria, where he intercepted his unwelcome mother at the general store, to which she had been delivered. To his amazement he found that his two sisters, striking blondes in their late teens, had accompanied her, and that disoriented him. But he barged ahead, and when his mother sought to embrace him, he held back. ‘You must go home,’ he said.

  ‘This is to be our home, Otto. We were wrong when we sent you and Father away.’

  ‘You didn’t send us. We went.’

  This brought sniffles, and she groped for her handkerchief, but Otto was not moved: ‘You must go back, because there’s no place for you here.’

  ‘You and your father need me, Otto. The girls and I have come all this way to help.’

  ‘Texas is a different place,’ the boy said.

  ‘I know. We were warned on the boat.’

  ‘You won’t like Texas.’ His harshness now brought tears to his sisters, and when he saw these attractive girls weeping he grew ashamed of himself.

  ‘Take them out to the farm,’ one of the men in the shabby store said, and when Otto asked: ‘How can I?’ the man said: ‘She has to know sooner or later.’ Mrs. Macnab asked: ‘Know what?’ and the man replied: ‘Lady, you’ll find out soon enough.’

  The only wagon in Victoria was procured, and Otto, aware that disaster loomed, was determined to avoid involvement with these unwelcome relatives. Riding in front of the procession like a page leading ladies to a castle, he refused to talk with them, and when the entourage approached the dog-run, he rode ahead, shouting: ‘Hey, Poppa!’

  Finlay and Zave were home now, and when they heard Otto crying as if for help, they hurried to the spacious porch, and there they stood when Otto delivered the three women. Uncertain as to how he should explain the situation, and confused about using the word ‘mother,’ he said simply: ‘They’re here.’

  Berthe Macnab burst into tears as she ran toward her husband, and the two girls stood shyly by, as embarrassed as their brother. Macnab was flabbergasted, and it was left to Campbell to extend grudging civilities: ‘Madam and you gals, sit down,’ and he brought forward three chairs, but he made no motion to invite them inside. However, María, hearing the commotion, came to the door, whereupon Zave said hurriedly: ‘My wife, María.’ There were muffled acknowledgments, with Zave whispering to his wife in Spanish: ‘Dios! La esposa de Finlay,’ at which María, thinking only of her sister, screamed: ‘Quién es esta?’ And then the morning began to fall apart, because Josefina, perplexed by the noise, hurried onto the porch, whereupon Otto ran to her, threw his arms about her, and cried: ‘This is my mother now.’

  It took Berthe and the girls some moments to comprehend that Josefina Garza was legally married to their father, or perhaps not so legally, because Berthe warned Macnab that she was prepared to throw him into jail, and so on. Zave did his best to placate her, pointing out that Baltimore was a long way from Texas and that oftentimes a man who was starting a new life, as many Americans in Texas were doing, broke all ties with his former life to begin afresh.

  ‘I suppose you have a wife back … where?’

  ‘Kaintucky, ma’am.’

  ‘And is your wife waiting there for you?’

  ‘As a matter of fact, she is.’ Macnab and his son gasped, for Campbell had told them across that flooded stream on the Trace that his wife had died. Together they stared at this big fellow about whom they knew so little, and instinctively Otto went to stand with him, for if Zave was in trouble, the boy must help protect him. Then María, who knew enough English to understand that last conversation, also went to stand with him, and Campbell placed his arm about her: ‘Now this one is my wife, and properly married.’

  Then Josefina moved to support Finlay, and the two couples, with their mutual son Otto between them, presented a solid phalanx against the women from Baltimore; it was the emerging frontier against the established city.

  ‘I’ll have you all thrown in jail!’ Berthe exploded, but Campbell told her: ‘You’ll have to build a big jail, considering all the men like us in Texas.’

  Macnab took no part in this uproar; he had fled Berthe once and was determined not to allow her to complicate his life a second time. His attractive daughters he wished well, as proved by the fact that he had sent them half his profits, but he did not want them in Texas. He was happy with Josefina Garza, and he knew that Berthe, if confined to the house he intended building, would be able to stand the isolation and the brooding loneliness for about one week. Yet he could not even tell her to go back home, but Campbell finally did, pointing out that there was simply no place they could stay in his house and that Finlay had no house of his own, and gradually he eased the three visitors toward their wagon. When both Finlay and Otto refused to accompany them to Victoria and then down to Linnville, where they could catch the next boat back to New Orleans, Zave volunteered to go.

  Humiliated, and terrified by the emptiness of Texas, the women started their retreat, while Otto, leaning against the oak tree, watched dispassionately. In confusion he stood looking at his Baltimore family, then turned on his heel and ran back to where María waited on the porch.

  When the women reached Victoria, Berthe demanded to see the Catholic priest, intending to charge both Macnab and Campbell with bigamy, but there was of course no priest in attendance and Goliad was twenty-five miles away. The Mexican authorities would not concern themselves with a civil brawl, and especially not when the complainant was an anglo and the women who would be hurt were good Mexicans. In Victoria, Berthe accomplished nothing, but in one of Linnville’s three houses, where they waited for the boat to New Orleans, she was approached by an American farmer who had studied the trio these last two days and who asked if he might marry the older daughter.

  ‘I suppose you already have a wife in Kentucky,’ Berthe said harshly.
br />   ‘No, ma’am. I come from Mississippi, and I’m single.’

  ‘I suppose you brought your slaves with you.’

  ‘No, ma’am. Men like me, we can’t afford slaves.’ When she did not respond to his major question, he turned to the daughter and said: ‘Ma’am, you’re beautiful. Would you consider marryin’ me?’ and the women collapsed in tears.

  Zave Campbell stayed with the Macnab women until the next sailing vessel arrived, and to his astonishment the ship this time was an improved steamboat that negotiated the entrance to Matagorda Bay as easily as if the pass were ten miles wide: ‘Bless my sainted aunt! Civilization comes to Texas!’

  But while he was celebrating in Linnville, a posse of white settlers located near Victoria visited the Campbell dog-run and demanded from Macnab a payment of nine dollars, claiming that among the horses he had driven to New Orleans were several bearing their brands, clearly placed on the flanks of the animals.

  Finlay explained truthfully that the animals, cows and mules alike, had been delivered to him by Campbell and Benito Garza, and this seemed to satisfy the men, because one said: ‘That’s what we thought,’ so after the nine dollars were handed over, they rode off, apparently content.

  When Otto asked what this visit had meant, his father explained that in frontier communities where policemen and judges could not yet enforce the law, men felt they had to provide their own enforcement, serving as police and judge and sometimes executioner. He pointed out that Otto had now experienced three radically different communities: ‘In Cincinnati you had judges and jails, the way things ought to be. In Under-the-Hill you had nothing, and you didn’t like it. Here in Victoria we want law, but we don’t know how to get it.’

  ‘We have an alcalde.’

  ‘Mexican law doesn’t count, because the richest man can always buy the judge.’

  ‘Will there be American law?’

  ‘There will have to be.’

  When Otto was alone, herding longhorns, he recalled the predictions of the businessmen in New Orleans; they had foreseen a day when United States law would operate in Texas, but he could not guess how this might come about.

  On the day of Zave’s return he told María and Josefina about his farewell to the Macnab women: ‘They was weepin’ and the mother said some real ugly things. She said both him and me ought to be in jail.’ Pointing to Otto, he added: ‘She said you would end in hell sure, associatin’ with men like your daddy and me.’

  On the following day, 10 November 1833, Zave rode south to intercept a caravan of merchants from beyond the Rio Grande, hoping to convince them to sell their wares to him rather than to the two storekeepers in Victoria. He told the Macnabs that he would surely be home by nightfall of the next day, but he wasn’t; however, this occasioned no worry, since men on this frontier were accustomed to sleeping on the road when necessary, and their women knew it.

  On the evening of the eleventh, as the Macnabs prepared for bed, they were startled by a warning cry from Josefina: ‘The sky is falling!’ And when they ran onto the porch they witnessed a spectacle of awesome beauty, the passage of earth through a stupendous shower of meteors.

  Every year, toward the middle of November, the earth picks its way through the Leonid Meteors, with observers marveling at the lovely fireworks. Every thirty-three years, for some arcane reason, the display is so magnificent that even lay watchers record it. And through the centuries an occasional passage becomes so striking that it is judged to be unique, observers having forgotten the reports of previous such visitations. One of these miraculous passages happened over Texas in 1833, when some thirty-five thousand flaming meteors an hour were seen.

  ‘Look!’ Otto shouted. ‘It’s light enough to read my book!’ And for two hours the family watched the spectacular display, unaware that the extraordinary illumination, which made all of southern America about as bright as day, was creating havoc for a friend.

  Next morning, right before dawn, as Finlay was getting out of bed, he and Josefina heard a series of suspicious noises, then the squeaking of a door as if someone had opened it, and he was starting to investigate when a piercing scream came from some animal or human, he could not tell which. Dashing into the yard, he found Otto beneath the oak tree, holding aloft the heavy legs of Zave Campbell, who had been hanged from one of the lower branches.

  ‘Poppa! Help!’

  Before Finlay could reach the dangling man, stout María had already leaped from the porch and was helping Otto hold him aloft, but she could see that her husband’s face was already growing purplish: ‘Señor Finlay! Ayúdeme!’

  Finlay was unable to loosen the rope that was strangling his partner, and while he was fumbling with the knot about Zave’s neck, Otto ran coolly into the house, grabbed a bird gun, and took steady aim at the rope. With the explosion of the gun, Campbell fell, carrying María and Finlay with him to the ground.

  Otto was first to pull apart the knot about the neck, and slowly the purple in the hanged man’s face began to subside, until at last he was able to whisper: ‘Thank you, son.’

  That evening was long remembered as ‘the night stars fell on Texas,’ but in the Victoria district it was ‘the night they tried to hang Zave Campbell.’

  ‘Darned things glowed like lanterns,’ he said when his windpipe healed. ‘Threw a light on me just as I was herdin’ the Weavers’ steers.’ To Otto he said sullenly: ‘Don’t never steal cows in Texas, boy. Down here they play by different rules.’

  … TASK FORCE

  The only time in two years we failed to produce full attendance at our Task Force meetings was at our November session in Amarillo. Ransom Rusk felt obligated to fly with a group of Texas sportsmen to their annual safari in Africa, this time to the vast Okavango Swamp in Botswana, and he apologized for deserting us: ‘This junket was scheduled three years ago. Maybe I’ll get me a trophy for my Africa Room. I’ll leave my proxy with Lorenzo.’

  I regretted his absence, for his impressive credentials and ponderous manner gave solid underpinning whenever we started questioning our visiting experts; it’s extraordinary how a short question from a billionaire seems more penetrating than a long one from an assistant professor. Also, Rusk added necessary coloring to the portrait of Texas which we hoped to present to the public, because Quimper, dressing like a television Texan and speaking like one, often lent our sessions an air of levity that might mislead the unwary into thinking we were a bunch of good ol’ boys. It was salutary to let them see that Rusk’s more sober competence was also part of the real Texas.

  When our staff informed me that the subject for our Amarillo meeting was to be ‘Anomie in Texas’ by Professor Helen Smeadon of Texas Tech in Lubbock, I told them: ‘I don’t know what that word means and I’ll bet none of the others do, either.’ After phone calls confirmed this, I asked the young people to formulate a definition, which they circulated prior to the meeting:

  anomie (Fr.) or anomy (Eng.). A precise sociological term popularized by the French scholar Emile Durkheim, 1. Collapse of the guiding social structures governing a specific society. 2. State of alienation experienced by a class or an individual resulting from such collapse. 3. Severe personal disorganization resulting in antisocial behavior. [Greek anomia = lawlessness
  Characterized by a feeling of rootlessness and a contempt for others who do obey the social laws. Commonly witnessed 1. in time of radical change; 2. during movement from one society to another; 3. as a result of death in one’s family or divorce; 4. following severe or disorienting physical or mental illness. A common cause of movement to frontier societies or a result of such movement. Ultimate manifestation: suicide.

  It looked to me as if this was going to be a handful to discuss, and as we flew low in our approach to Amarillo, I was not at all satisfied that our meeting would be a success. However, when I looked down at the amazingly flat terrain and the little roads that cut across the countryside for fifty miles without taking a turn, my
mind wandered to other subjects. ‘What’s the weather going to be down there?’ I asked the pilot, and he turned back to tell me: ‘Like those three men lost in the Arctic. Howling wind, thermometer way down, dogs howling, and one fellow says: “Thank God for one thing. We ain’t in Amarillo on a bad day.” ’

  I loved this lonely part of Texas, so harsh, so unrelenting, where a windmill dominates the sky like one of the Alps in Switzerland. The Panhandle was a powerful place to visit if distances didn’t scare you, and I supported the claim of one local resident: ‘We’re the hospitality capital of Texas. Weather cold, hearts warm.’

  It was so bitterly cold when we landed that my fears about the meeting revived, but when we met Dr. Smeadon, who was waiting for us in a cozy meeting room decorated with hot buttered rum, I concluded right away: This woman knows what she’s doing. In her forties, tallish, forthright and with a sense of humor, she replied to my questions: ‘Undergraduate work at SMU, graduate degrees at Chicago and Stanford, post-doctorate at the Sorbonne, where I specialized in the analysis of anomie with Raymond Aron.’

  She barged right in: ‘Anyone who seeks to get a grasp on the spiritual history of Texas is obligated to state which of the following four characterizations of our founding American immigrants he supports: “Were the newcomers (one) criminals fleeing justice, or (two) rascals fleeing the bill collector, or (three) average men who were merely restless, or (four) superior individuals tired of the evasions of society back east or overseas and lured by a vision of a better world they might achieve?” ’